Amelia ignored the question. “I have a lead-lined container in my suitcase; it’s just the right size to secure the spoon and block its magic.” She turned to reach for the suitcase before remembering that Sheffield had already taken their luggage away. “What about putting it in your coat pocket?” she suggested instead.
“Worth a try.” Caleb reached for the teaspoon, but the merest brush of his fingers against its handle sent a painful shock through him. “Aah!” he shouted, snatching back his hand.
“Just deal with the pain for a few seconds,” Amelia said testily.
Caleb gave her an outraged look. “These are the fingers of an artist and pianist! I’m not risking them.”
“Rude sketches in textbooks don’t count as art.” She gazed at him for a long moment, but Caleb knew she wasn’t really seeing him. There were practically cogs of thought spinning in her expression. “Since the energy is triggered by discord, why don’t we do the opposite?” she suggested. “Show accord. Friendliness.”
“All right.” Caleb extended his hand, Amelia took it, and they exchanged a firm handshake, smiling at each other rather foolishly.
A bacon and egg pie on a neighboring table erupted in a cloud of chicken feathers and flew away, squawking.
“Perhaps a hug?” Amelia ventured.
Caleb dutifully wrapped his arms around her and she embraced him in return, as they’d done several times throughout their history: on graduation days; when he won the Henry Beauclerc Award; when she won it the following year; and most fatefully, upon news of her grandfather’s death. Caleb had always loved hugging her. She smelled of lilac and new books; she held him as if she really wanted to; and altogether she felt like his dream of a home. But the feeling now was like he’d entered that home, taken off his clothes and all his defenses, and tucked himself into bed with her.
Flakes from the ceiling showered over them like painted rain.
“Not working,” Caleb said, pulling away from Amelia before his body began to react the same way his heart had. “We’ve obviously grown too expert at arguing.”
“It’s becoming a habit,” Amelia agreed worriedly. “A bad habit. I don’t like it.”
“Yes, but it’s better than transferring to Cambridge University,” Caleb contended. “Their football team is rubbish.”
“But the campus is pretty.”
“In that case, I’d fit right in,” Caleb said. He smiled crookedly at her. “And you too, of course.”
They looked around the room hopefully, but this spot of banter had not fixed anything.
“We need something more,” Amelia murmured.
Their eyes met with silent understanding. Caleb’s stomach suddenly felt like a pub turned to chaos by magic.
“We’ve kissed before,” Amelia said with a calmness that wasn’t entirely convincing.
“We were eleven,” Caleb reminded her.
Blue smoke began to billow overhead. They looked up at it worriedly; then their eyes met again. This time, the understanding was even more potent. But just as silent—because Caleb for one had no idea how he could ever put into words what he knew in that moment. Well, the words were actually simple.I want to kiss you.But the reasons were a tangle he could not even begin to unravel.
“What’s one kiss between friends?” Amelia said, reasonable as ever. “And we are friends,” she added more loudly, addressing the magic surrounding them. “We love each other.”
“We do,” Caleb said. And cupping one hand against her jaw, ignoring the wild leap of his heart, he closed his eyes and kissed her.
Chapter Five
If history is “a cyclic poem written by time,”
as Shelley says, then some episodes of it can only
be described as limericks.
I, on the Past, Cornelius Ottersock
A kiss is almostnever just a kiss. All through the ages it has been the sealing of a contract, a moment of letting go, the proof of devotion, a betrayal—and a thousand other profundities that can be pecked onto a cheek or applied to someone’s lips, occasionally with the tongue serving as an exclamation mark.
For Amelia, however, kissing Calebwasjust a kiss, and no amount of opinion from the lower galleries of her body could change her mind. After all, she had been kissed two or three times before (alas, the fact that she couldn’t be specific about the number indicated their quality), and this experience allowed her to be entirely cool now.
